“As long as we act the part, it’ll feel real eventually,” Yuri had tried to persuade him. Tabuki had hesitated in the face of her stubborn optimism…but eventually, his thirst for revenge won out.
Sadly, their marriage hadn’t lasted long.
“I suppose it was simply never going to work out for the two of us,” Yuri mused to herself as she laid herself down on the sofa, clutching one half of the diary in her hand. “Perhaps it was impossible.”
Was she stupid for wanting to have a family? Or friends? Could she have spared herself this strange sense of loneliness if she had simply searched for the diary by herself?
Yuri was surprised to realize that she was actually slightly worried about Tabuki. She always figured that if the relationship broke down, she would bounce back to her usual life of solitude without much trouble. Shrinking in the cold, she flipped through the half-diary all over again. But without its other half, it held no meaning. The fate-altering spell was incomplete.
“Thank you for everything, he says. For what, exactly?”
It was Tabuki who always got up and fetched her a cardigan or blanket when she was cold, and he was usually the one who took out the trash, too. He wouldn’t drink with her, but sometimes he would dutifully sit with her while she partook. Their relationship could never quite be described as “family,” but it still felt like it ended too soon.
Back to bed, she decided. After she awoke, she’d take a hot shower, then call the wedding venue to discuss their reservation. And after that, she’d need to get in touch with the fashion designer about her custom-ordered wedding dress.
I pulled three clear plastic clothing storage bins out of the closet, each lazily marked with a piece of red packing tape with a name written on it: Kanba, Shoma, Himari.
“Hey, Sho-chan, um…I can’t seem to find my red sweater with the fuzzy buttons on the back,” said Himari as she folded up all of her winter clothes side by side.
“Red sweater? I don’t remember seeing one. Maybe it’s in one of the other bins.” Kanba and I had finished unpacking our winter clothes while Himari was still in the hospital, so our bins were filled with summer clothes instead. “I’m sure we must’ve come across it at some point, though.”
Himari always took the longest to repack, which was why we made her go last.
“Times like these, I usually find it mixed in with Kan-chan’s stuff…” She knelt down beside me and opened Kanba’s bin.
“Yikes. Somebody ought to refold all that,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
“It must still be painful for him to use his hands,” she mused.
Indeed, though he was finally freed from his bandages, his wounds were still painful to look at. That being said, I was pretty sure none of that had anything to do with this slapdash folding job. No, this was proof of Kanba’s personality—he simply went through the motions without actually paying attention to any of the minor details, like arrangement or wrinkle prevention. He would simply gesture at it and say, “There! Folded ’em!” And yes, technically, he was right.
“Aha! See? Told you so!” Smiling, Himari pulled her red sweater out from beneath Kanba’s summer wear.
“Do you have everything now?” I asked, surveying the rainbow of colored cloth lying on the floor. She liked to keep wearing her summer clothes in layers during the other seasons, so her storage box was practically empty during the winter, unlike ours.
“Yup,” she nodded with a satisfied grin. Penguin No. 3 nodded along sleepily amid the vast ocean of wool.
“Cool. Let’s get everything set up before the others arrive.”
Today we were planning to have sukiyaki to celebrate Himari’s return from the hospital. Kanba was on grocery duty, while Himari and I were in charge of cooking. Not only that, Kanba and I made a construction-paper banner that read WELCOME HOME HIMARI!
“Wake up, San-chan! We’re gonna have sukiyaki!”
As she moved her clothes into the dresser, she gave No. 3 a pat on the head. It opened its little button eyes a tiny crack and squeaked faintly.
We hadn’t used the sukiyaki pot in a good long while, so I gave it a rewash to be on the safe side. Now it sat in the center of the table, surrounded by a medley of ingredients: green onions, shirataki noodles, shiitake mushrooms, grilled tofu, chop suey greens, and of course, the Takakura family’s special homemade sukiyaki sauce, made by yours truly. Next to it sat the meat Kanba brought home from the store.
Gathered around the table, the four of us raised our cups.
“Welcome home, Himari!” Kanba and I shouted in unison.
“Welcome home, Himari-chan! I’m happy for you!” said Oginome-san with a smile.
“Thanks. But I’ll still have to go back in for regular checkups,” Himari replied with a shrug and a bashful smile. She was wearing the red sweater from earlier over a pair of jeans, and she’d tied her hair into loose pigtails.
“Eh, don’t worry about it,” Kanba grinned.
“Yeah. What matters is that you’re home now,” I chimed in as I greased the pot.
“From now on, you won’t be lonely at mealtimes anymore! You ought to celebrate it!” Oginome-san insisted with a broad smile.
Earlier, when Himari asked me whether we should invite Oginome-san to dinner, I hesitated. Granted, I vowed to myself that I would stop running from her, but even then, I wasn’t sure how she would react to me pulling a 180 and inviting her over out of nowhere. In the end, however, I was glad I did.
“Hey, um…thanks for coming over tonight.”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss Himari-chan’s celebration! But I gotta say, this meat looks real expensive.”
She looked down at the marbled sukiyaki beef. The rest of us followed suit.
“It’s very aesthetically pleasing,” Himari commented, her eyes sparkling.
“For the first time in my life, I ordered the most expensive cut of meat they had. I was so nervous, I was practically shaking in my boots,” Kanba bragged.
“You got the most expensive one? How much per gram?” I asked, purely on reflex. Sure, I could tell at a glance that it was high quality, but the knowledge that it was the best they had made my wallet cringe.
“Don’t be a cheapskate, all right? I got my paycheck from work, and I wanted to spend it on something special,” he replied offhandedly.
“Aniki, you haven’t been doing anything shady, have you?” I asked, halfway serious.
The room went silent.